Software developer resource service, AirPair, today announced that 17 new API providers have been added to their trusted partners network. AirPair provides line-by-line code support from leading API developers, using the ‘pair programming’ mentoring technique.

WS-REST.org has announced that it will host the fifth edition of the International Workshop on Web APIs and RESTful Design at the 23rd International World Wide Web Conference this April in Seoul, South Korea. The first workshop was held in 2010. As APIs have continued to drive innovation in the connected world, the workshop has continued to refine its scope of study, broaden its expectations and increase interest. As the organizers begin to develop this years agenda, PW caught up with Carlos Pedrinaci, a research fellow at The Open University, UK, and one of the event organizers.

Successful Twitter engagement is generally measured with the simple goal of gaining a high follower count, but true engagement doesn’t end with a follow-back—that is just the beginning. What you really need for success on Twitter is an ongoing conversation with like-minded individuals, folks who will provide informed feedback on your tweets, introduce you to their friends on Twitter who share your opinions and help spread your messages. This series of articles on engagement programming will show you how to use Twitter API 1.1 to move from simply following to truly engaging on Twitter.

As companies, organizations and professionals become more and more interconnected via social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, a new trend is beginning to emerge—social network data visualization. This article shows you how to make a data visualization of your own.

Scrazzl, social discovery platform for research materials, offers the Scrazzl API which grants developers access to research product information. Scrazzl develops tools that enable scientists to make informed decisions about research products and connect with other scientists to solve technical problems.

TipTap Lab uses psychology to better understand existing and potential customers. The TipTap Lab API allows third party apps to take advantage of such psychology by building profiles for those that interact with the app and acting accordingly. Whether an app developer wants to personalize an online experience or pair up users with similar interests, the TipTap Lab API examines the abstract, subconscious layer of users to better and enable a developer to accomplish goals.

Scientific journals are providing greater access to published research by releasing new APIs. Cambridge Journals Online API and Public Library of Science Article Level Metrics API have both been released in the past several weeks. Meanwhile, the European Commission has just completed a public consultation on open access to research data ahead of a new wave of policy reform and their next big research funding round.

Our API directory now includes 531 reference APIs. The newest is the CanLII API. The most popular, in terms of mashups, is the GeoNames API. We list 88 GeoNames mashups. Below you'll find some more stats from the directory, including the entire list of reference APIs.

The SolarPlots API provides a new data tool to track where the sun will be in any given location in the US (and adjacent parts of Mexico and Canada) for any specific date and time or series of dates. The sun plotting search tool could possibly be used by photographers needing to know best times to shoot twilight scenes, for sun-bathers wanting to book the best time on a hotel rooftop, or home buyers wanting to calculate how much direct sunlight their new property may get. Developers could use the app to scale up such individual needs or to add sun-loving contextual information to a location-based app product.

Big data platform Splunk has released an analytics product specifically to allow for on-the-fly analysis of data stored in Hadoop platforms. Under the sub-brand moniker “Hunk”, the Splunk-analytics-for-Hadoop product has been released today. Using the Splunk API along with a library of SDKs in popular develop languages including Javascript, Ruby and Python, users can point Hunk at any Hadoop-stored data and almost immediately start running search queries and producing analytics visualizations.

EBSCO announced that Sweden's Stockholm University has selected the EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) which includes custom integration of the EDS API into the institution's library software platform. The University was looking for a reliable search and discovery solution that would be easy to integrate with the existing library software platform.

Earlier this year, ProgrammableWeb reported that the New York Public Library (NYPL) had launched the What's on the Menu API, the first public API released by the institution. The New York Public Library has just announced the launch of the NYPL Digital Collections API which allows developers programmatic access to the Library's vast collections of digitized creative works including manuscripts, historical maps, rare prints, photographs and much more.

National Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Centers (MMPC) are a group of National Institutes of Health sponsored resources that research diabetes, obesity and other metabolic diseases based in mice. The MMPC has made much of its research and data available through the MMPC API. Developers can pull from the data sets to enhance the research with big data tools and analytics.

For music enthusiasts who thrive on insider knowledge and detailed music conversation, WhoSampled would be just their cup of tea. It's basically an online community for discovering and discussing sampled music, remixes and cover songs. WhoSampled has partnered with The Echo Nest to provide the WhoSampled API that allows developers to access and integrate its functionality with other applications.